After more than a fortnight’s slow progress, General Huerta struck Orozco’s forces at Conejos, in Chihuahua, near the branch line running out to the American mines at Mapimi.  Orozco’s forces, finding themselves heavily outnumbered and overmatched in artillery, hastily evacuated Conejos, retreating northward up the railway line by means of some half-dozen railway trains.  Several weeks more passed before Huerta again struck Orozco’s forces at Rellano, in Chihuahua, close to the former battlefield, along the railway, where his predecessor, General Gonzalez Salas, had come to grief.  This was in June.

Huerta, with nearly twice as many men and three times as much artillery, drove Orozco back along the line of the railway after a two days’ long-range artillery bombardment, against which the rebels were powerless.  This battle, in which the combined losses in dead and wounded on both sides were less than 200, was described in General Huerta’s official report as “more terrific than any battle that had been fought in the Western Hemisphere during the last fifty years.”  In his last triumphant bulletin from the field, General Huerta telegraphed to President Madero that his brave men had driven the enemy from the heights with a final fierce bayonet charge, and that their bugle blasts of victory could be heard even then on the crest.

Pascual Orozco, on the other hand, reported to the revolutionary Junta in El Paso that he had ordered his men to retire before the superior force of the federals, and that they had accomplished this without disorder by the simple process of boarding their waiting trains and steaming slowly off to the north, destroying the bridges and culverts behind him as they went along.  One of my fellow war correspondents, who served on the rebel side during this battle, afterward told me that the federals, whose bugle calls Huerta heard on the heights, did not get up to this position until two days after the rebels had abandoned their trenches along the crest.

The subsequent advance of the federals from Rellano to the town of Jimenez, Orozco’s old headquarters, which had been evacuated by him without firing a shot, lasted another week.

Here Huerta’s army camped for another week.  At Jimenez the long-brewing unpleasantness between Huerta’s regular officers and some of Madero’s bandit friends, commanding forces of irregular cavalry, came to a head.  The most noted of these former guerrilla chieftains was Francisco Villa, an old-time bandit, who now rejoiced in the honorary rank of a Colonel.  Villa had appropriated a splendid Arab stallion, originally imported by a Spanish horse-breeder with a ranch near Chihuahua City.  General Huerta coveted this horse, and one day, after an unusually lively carouse at general headquarters, he sent a squad of soldiers to bring the horse out of Villa’s corral to his own stable.  The old bandit took offense at this, and came stalking into headquarters to make a personal remonstrance.  He was put under